#sometimes i remember this website exists

[ruscapeh]

dummies

i didnt notice my honoroit misspelling fuck

[ontargetmadders]

I'm having a little trip down memory lane tonight thinking about all the games I used to play in my childhood and it got me thinking about sky tv games for cartoons. (The ones you either pressed the red button to play or paid for through a sky game pass for the day). And I have to say why tf don't we still have them??

[nomairuins]

i am okay tho i just have momeys sometimrs . please do not ever worry abt me guys

[hexastitchimera]

Genuine observation, no sass and no disrespect, but being someone who is chronically OFFline & an active volunteer/activist for over a decade, and seeing what people say is "crucial discourse" online is... Quite the trip, honestly.

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

Yeah like what’s the point of even having anon features if they can’t use your website?????? Like on certain blogs I can’t even view them without being blocked????? I don’t understand????

And I can’t talk to people if they don’t have a submission box which is awkward because not many people have a submission box that I can see! -🌟

══════════════════ 

well the blog thing is most likely that some people have set it to not be visible outside the tumblr dashboard; some people just don’t want their blog viewable to anyone outside of tumblr and there’s a number of reasons why that could be, it’s their own personal decision

the submission/ask box thing can sometimes be a case i know of new users forgetting to turn it on, but sometimes too its deliberately turned off (or limited, like anons being turned off and only other users can ask qs) for, again, a number of different reasons (︶︿︶)

[marxism-transgenderism]

Sometimes I forget that there's still a large chunk of this website dominated by people who think 1960s white butch-femme culture is the like the height of queer existence and treats any criticism or light hearted joking about it like they're being put through conversion therapy by strangers online. Like yall remember how unbelievably mad people got about the word "futch" and shit like that. You can't even say that stone butch blues is just an alright book without people acting like you're burning the word of god. Chill out

[foone]

Look if there's one thing, just one thing, that I wish everyone understood about archiving, it's this:

We can always decide later that we don't need something we archived.

Like, if we archive a website that's full of THE WORST STUFF, like it turns out it's borderline illegal bot-made spam art, we can delete it. Gone.

We can also chose not to curate. You can make a list of the 100 Best Fanfic and just quietly not link to or mention the 20,000 RPFs of bigoted youtubers eating each other. No problem!

We can also make things not publicly available. This happens surprisingly often: like, sometimes there'll be a YouTube channel of alt-right bigotry that gets taken down by YouTube, but someone gives a copy to the internet archive, and they don't make it publicly available. Because it might be useful for researchers, and eventually historians, it's kept. But putting it online for everyone to see? That's just be propaganda for their bigotry. So it's hidden, for now. You can ask to see it, but you need a reason.

And we can say all these things, we can chose to delete it later, we can not curate it, we can hide it from public view... But we only have these options BECAUSE we archived it.

If we didn't archive it, we have no options. It is gone. I'm focusing on the negative here, but think about the positive side:

What if it turns out something we thought was junk turns out to be amazing new art?

What if something we thought of as pointless and not worth curating turns out to be influential?

What if something turns out to be of vital historical importance, the key that is used to solve a great mystery, the Rosetta stone for an era?

All of those things are great... If we archived it when we could.

Because this is an asymmetric problem:

If we archived it and it turns out it's not useful, we can delete.

If we didn't archive it and it turns out it is useful, OOPS!

You can't unlose something that's been lost. It's gone. This is a one way trip, it's already fallen off the cliff. Your only hope is that you're wrong about it being lost, and there is actually still a copy somewhere. If it's truly lost, your only option is to build a time machine.

And this has happened! There are things lost, so many of them that we know of, and many more we don't know of. There are BOOKS OF THE BIBLE referenced in the canon that simply do not exist anymore. Like, Paul says to go read his letter to the Laodiceans, and what did that letter say? We don't know. It's gone.

The most celebrated playwright in the English tradition has plays that are just gone. You want to perform or watch Love's Labours Won? TOO FUCKING BAD.

Want to watch Lon Cheyney's London After Midnight, a mystery-horror silent film from 1927? TOO BAD. The MGM vault burnt down in 1965 and the last known copy went up in smoke.

If something still exists, if it still is kept somewhere, there is always an opportunity to decide if it's worthy of being remembered. It can still be recognized for its merits, for its impact, for its importance, or just what it says about the time and culture and people who made it, and what they believed and thought and did. It can still be a useful part of history, even if we decide it's a horrible thing, a bigoted mess, a terrible piece of art. We have the opportunity to do all that.

If it's lost... We are out of options. All we can do is research it from how it affected other things. There's a lot of great books and plays and films and shows that we only know of because other contemporary sources talked about them so much. We're trying to figure out what it was and what it did, from tracing the shadow it cast on the rest of culture.

This is why archivists get anxious whenever people say "this thing is bad and should not be preserved". Because, yeah, maybe they're right. Maybe we'll look back and decide "yeah, that is worthless and we shouldn't waste the hard drive or warehouse space on it".

But if they're wrong, and we listen to them, and don't archive... We don't get a second chance at this. And archivists have been bitten too many times by talk of "we don't need copies, the original studio has the masters!" (it burnt down), or "this isn't worth preserving, it's just some damn silly fad" (the fad turned out to be the first steps of a cultural revolution), or "this media is degenerate/illegal/immoral" (it turns out those saying that were bigots and history doesn't agree with their assessment).

So we archive what we can. We can always decide later if it doesn't need preserving. And being a responsible archivist often means preserving things but not making them publicly available, or being selective in what you archive (I back up a lot of old computer hard drives. Often they have personal photos and emails and banking information! That doesn't get saved).

But it's not really a good idea to be making quality or moral judgements of what you archive. Because maybe you're right, maybe a decade or two later you'll decide this didn't need to be saved. And you'll have the freedom to make that choice. But if you didn't archive it, and decide a decade later you were wrong... It's just gone now. You failed.

Because at the end of the day I'd rather look at an archive and see it includes 10,000 things I think are worthless trash, than look at an archive of on the "best things" and know that there are some things that simply cannot be included. Maybe they were better, but can't be considered as one of the best... Because they're just gone. No one has read them, no one has been able to read them.

We have a long history of losing things. The least we can do going forward is to try and avoid losing more. And leave it up to history to decide if what we saved was worth it.

My dream is for a future where critics can look at stuff made in the present and go "all of this was shit. Useless, badly made, bigoted, horrible. Don't waste your time on it!"

Because that's infinitely better than the future where all they can do is go "we don't know of this was any good... It was probably important? We just don't know. It's gone. And it's never coming back"

[petermorwood]

Food on St Patrick's Day (in the USA)...

...is usually Corned Beef & Cabbage, which is the Irish-American version of the original Irish boiled bacon & cabbage, but while the celebratory Irishness is still going strong, try something a bit more authentic.

A nice warm coddle. Not cuddle, coddle, though just as comforting in its own way. (Some sources suggest it's a hangover cure, not that such a thing would ever be necessary at this time of year, oh dear me no.)

Coddle is a stew using potatoes, onions, bacon, sausages, stout-if-desired / stock-if-not, pepper, sage, thyme and Time.

You'll often see it called "Dublin Coddle", but my Mum made Lisburn Coddle lots of times, I've made West Wicklow Coddle more than once, and on one occasion in a Belgian holiday apartment I made Brugsekoddel, which is an OK spelling for something that doesn't exist in any cookbook.

*****

I do remember one amendment I made to Mum's recipe, which met with slight resistance at the time and great appreciation thereafter.

Her coddle was originally cooked on the stove-top, not in the oven, and nothing was pre-cooked. Potatoes were quartered, onions were sliced, bacon was cut into chunks and then everything went into the big iron casserole, then onto the slow back ring, and there it simmered Until Done.

However, the bacon was thick-cut back rashers, and the sausages were pork chipolatas.

Raw, they looked like this:

...and the bacon looked like this:

Cooked in the way Mum initially did, they looked pretty much the same afterwards. The sausages didn't change colour. Nor did the bacon.

While everything tasted fine, the meat parts always looked - to me, anyway - somewhat ... less than appealing. "Surgical appliance pink" is the kindest way to put it, and that's all I'm saying. This is apparently "white coddle" and Dubs can get quite defensive about This Is The Way It SHOULD Look.

I'm not a Dub, so I persuaded Mum to fry both the bacon and sausages first, just enough to get a bit of brown on, and wow! Improvement! I remember my Dad nodding in approval but - because he was Wise - not saying anything aloud until Mum gave it the green light as well.

Doing the coddle in the oven, first with lid on then with lid off, came later and met with equal approval. So did using only half of the onion raw and frying the other half lightly golden in the bacon fat.

Nobody quoted from a movie that wouldn't be made for another decade, but there was a definite feeling of...

*****

There are coddle recipes all over the Net: I've made sure that these are from Ireland to avoid the corned-beef-not-boiled-bacon "adjustment" versions which are definitely out there. I've already seen one with Bratwurst. Just wait, it'll be chorizo next.

Oh, hell's teeth, I was right. And from RTE...

Returning to relative normality, here's Donal Skehan's white coddle and his browned coddle with barley (I'm going to try that one).

Here's Dairina Allen's Frenchified with US measurements version. (I feel considerably less heretical now.)

And finally (OK, not Irish, but it references a couple of the previous ones and is a VERY comprehensive write-up, so gets a pass) Felicity Cloake's Perfect Dublin Coddle (perfect according to who, exactly...?) in The Guardian.

*****

Returning to the beginning, and how boiled bacon became corned beef (a question which prompted @dduane to start an entire website...!)

The traditional Irish meat animal for those who could afford it was the pig, but when Irish immigrants (even before the Great Famine) arrived in the USA, they often lived in the same urban districts as Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

For fairly obvious reasons pork, bacon and other piggy products were unavailable in those districts, but salt beef was right there and far cheaper than any meat Irish immigrants had ever seen before.

Insist on tradition or eat what was easy to find? There'd have been contest - and do I sometimes wonder a bit if sauerkraut ever came close to replacing cabbage for the same reason.

The pre-Famine Irish palate liked sour tastes: a German (?) visitor to Ireland in the mid-1600s wrote about about what were called "the best-favoured peasantry in Europe", and mentioned that they had "seventy-several sour milks and creams*, and the sourer they be, the better they like them."

* Yogurt? Kefir? Skyr? Gosh...

Corned beef and Kraut as the immigrants' celebratory "Irish" meal for St Patrick's Day? Maybe, maybe not.

Time for "Immigrant Song" (with kittens).

*****

Corned beef got its name from the size of the salt grains with which the beef was prepared. They were usually bigger than kosher salt, like pinhead oats or even as large as grains of wheat, and their name derived originally from "corned (gun)powder", the large coarse grains used in cannon.

BTW, "corn" has been a generic English term for "grain" for centuries, and "but Europe didn't have corn" is an American mistake assuming the word refers to sweetcorn / maize, which it doesn't.

Lindsey Davis, author of the "Falco" series, had a couple of rants about it and other US-requested "corrections". As she points out, mistakes need corrected but "corn" is not a mistake, just a difference in vocabulary.

*****

In Ancient and Medieval Ireland pig would have included wild boar, the hunting of which was a suitable pastime for warriors and heroes, because Mr Boar took a very dim view of the whole proceeding and wasn't shy about showing it (see "wild boar" in my tags and learn more).

Cattle were for milk, butter, cream and little cattle; also wealth, status, and heroic displays in their theft, defence or recovery. It's no accident that THE great Irish epic is "The Cattle-Raid of Cooley" / Táin Bó Cúailnge (tawn / toyn boh cool-nyah).

Killing a cow for meat was ostentation on a level of lighting cigars with 100-, or even 500-, currency-unit notes. Once it had been cooked and eaten there'd be no more milk, butter, cream or little cattle from that source, so eating beef was showing off And Then Some.

Also, loaning a prize bull to run with someone else's heifers was a sign of great friendship or alliance, while refusing it might be an excuse for enmity or even war. IMO that's what Maeve of Connaught intended all along, picking undiplomatic envoys who would get drunk and shoot their mouths off so the loan was refused and she, insulted, would have an excuse to...

But I digress, as usual. Or again. Or still... :->

*****

For the most part, "pig" mean "domestic porker", and in later periods right up to the Famine, these animals were seldom eaten.

Instead, known as "the gentleman who pays the rent", the family pig ate kitchen scraps and rooted about for other foods, none of which the tenant had to grow or buy for them. These fattened pigs would go to market twice a year, and the money from their sale would literally pay that half-year's rent.

For wealthier (less poor?) farmers, pigs had another advantage. Calves arrived singly, lambs might be a pair, but piglets popped out by the dozen. A sow with (some of) her farrow was even commemorated on the old ha'penny coin...

What with bulls, chickens, hares, horses, hounds, pigs, salmon and stags, the pre-decimal Irish coinage is a good inspiration for some sort of fantasy currency.

But that's another post, for another day.

[femsolid]

Sometimes I answer to someone commenting on a post of mine and they respond with the most idiotic and out of touch response and I'm like oh yeah, there are men on this website I forgot. I just keep assuming I'm talking with women so I expect a meaningful exchange with intelligent arguments and advices and keep getting shocked by weird sociopathic responses that make me remember that men exist. It's the tone, the writing as if their feelings are facts, the systematic gaslighting, the over-explaining because they assume you know less than they do, this baby tyrant attitude, just looking around distributing judgement and imaginary punishments, the victim blaming and the overused talking points we've heard our entire lives because their personalities are interchangeable. Robots. That's what it feels like. Like talking to a robot. Genuinely. I feel like my intelligence is being insulted just reading their mediocre thoughts and opinions. And they have thoughts and opinions about everything don't they? Blah blah blah. Beep beep beep. Someone pulls the plugs on those robots for goodness sake.

[scarletfasinera]

Like what's funny is that none of the people criticizing the categorization of Stardew/AC/other “cozy” games are saying that those games are Evil and Bad and you should Stop Playing Them, in fact many of the people commenting on it do actually Like those games, they're just critiquing how the entire concept that makes these games work is that they hinge on the ideology of imperialist and colonist “cottagecore”-type ideals in order to maintain that “coziness” or “wholesomeness.” Which is an entirely valid criticism to make, and is just a true statement to make about the marketing of those games.

It isn't even discourse. They're not saying to boycott the games or anything. It's saying "You can play these games and that doesn't make you a bad person, it doesn't even make the creator a bad person, but you should examine the biases you have that cause you to think this way, and consider that this type of marketing IS insidious to those of us who are directly affected by the very same 'marketing' (propaganda) that lead to the colonization of our homes."

But over and over again people will read posts about this, sometimes posts in which "no I'm not 'canceling' the game & I'm not saying you're a bad person & I'm not just discoursing; I am just pointing out a Fact because I want people to actually Think about it" is stated EXPLICITLY, and I will still see people responding or vaguing about it like "oh people are trying to cancel Stardew Valley & Animal Crossing now!" or "Are you saying I'm a bad person for playing those games? Are those games bad now???" like the point just completely going over their head despite it being right in front of them. And it's like please read posts entirely before commenting, and stop projecting your personal worldviews and thought processes and values onto other people.

Also remember that people on this website exist who do not live in North America or Europe, because we are actually not the center of the world and the only people on tumblr. People outside of the imperial core who are more directly affected by these things and are more likely to notice them BECAUSE of their own life experiences are active on tumblr and make posts you see every day, and they do not have the exact same worldview that you do. So you just really need to stop assuming things and putting words in people's mouths, and just take what they say in better faith without leaping to extremes and lecturing them.

[batmansymbol]

can't remember the last time i made a blog post on this blog. i really am becoming the hermit i always aspired to be.

looking for somewhere to put this particular exhaustion though and journaling makes me feel lonely and lately all interpersonal interactions leave me with the feeling of having transgressed in many secret ways unknown to me. so vent follows. although for the record someday when i am a true hermit i will have found inner peace, and i will no longer make posts like this, and i instead will be able to identify a cypress tree on sight.

for now, i've been having this feeling of kneeling in the surf with my mouth open and the ocean trying to force itself down my throat. i'm working four jobs to make ends meet. they are meeting, barely. my 16-year-old car broke down for the last time, and this week i bought a new one from a man at a dealership who lied to me over the phone about hidden fees as though $900 meant nothing. now i have new car payments every month but i no longer hear a steady drip behind me in the car when it rains, can't decide which of the two feelings of dread is more potent. i loved that leaking car into its grave. i often wish i had a soul-crushing 9-to-5 that paid me $75,000 every year like clockwork. i am spreading myself too thin socially. i love everybody in my life. sometimes i receive profound and beautiful reactions to my writing, and also with four clicks i can see criticism of my work online that makes me feel like i should never have been born. i struggle to weight these experiences in a reasonable way in my mind. i have not read a new book since sally rooney's intermezzo. i hate everything i write but luckily the hatred comes in cycles, counterbalanced by defiant love, like my relationship with my forehead. i have to believe everything i write is the one (the one that will financially or artistically save me). i have to tell myself the one doesn't exist so as not to get my hopes up. i have to remind myself my problems are atomically small compared to nearly everything. i have to remind myself of this because sometimes it's the only thing that makes me feel human again. i have dreams about friends i had in high school and the shitty jokes i made to them, how much more sensitive i could have been. in the dreams they hate me, or forgive me, or hit me. last april at age 28 i began to have back pain every single night from a degenerated spinal disc and now at age 30 i have anti-arthritis pills in my toiletries bag. it hurts to lean back in a chair, but i have all my limbs and my mind. i wonder every day why i'm not doing something differently. my inability to do anything meaningful disgusts me. i find meaning whenever i open the blinds. i have forgotten to switch my car insurance to my new vehicle, so after i press Post Now i will go to the website that will ask me for my password and to confirm i am myself.

[etheralisi]

Rottmnt Fakeposting part 3

Find parts 1 and 2 here + 3.5 + 4 because this couldn’t all fit on one post

🍏holy-sewer-apples Follow

I met a little green alien dude once. Wonder if he’s doing okay

1,578 notes

🕜has-lou-jitsu-been-found-yet Follow

Day 3679 of me posting: no

🎃scared-of-crows-deactivated23902741 Follow

Get a hobby

🛸atomiclass9000 Follow

I will out your search history 

92 notes

☄️gravity-tumbles Follow

Every time I phone in sick, I think about that one kid who came into school bright green. Must’ve been ill as hell. I could never 

767 notes

🐝noneofyourbeezwax Follow

Sasquatch this kappacrawler that. There’s only one cryptid I care about and that’s my neighbour’s cat. That thing ain’t a cat. It’s bright yellow and it stares into my soul

🚫nonononope Follow

That’s normal cat behaviour

🐝noneofyourbeezwax Follow

DID YOU MISS THE PART WHERE I SAID BRIGHT YELLOW

🐝noneofyourbeezwax Follow

No I don’t have any pictures. Stop asking. Damn not-cat keeps vanishing into thin air

🫂glompglomp Follow

Tf is a kappacrawler

🐺wendigo-watcher Follow

Local New York conspiracy. Scuttles around sewers, on roofs, steals your children (maybe)

🐝noneofyourbeezwax Follow

This ain’t about him

6,073 notes

🧚pixipartched Follow

I really really feel bad for asking, but I don’t have much of a choice. Aliens squished by home. Here’s a link to my go fund me here

48 notes

💀outoftouchoutoftime Follow

Last time I had this many people following me, it was an ambush

#I don’t know what I did but hi

56 notes

🏒 HOCKEYORDEATH Follow

EVERY WEBSITE I VISIT ASKS IF I ACCEPT COOKIES

🏒 HOCKEYORDEATH Follow

NO I DO NOT

🏒 HOCKEYORDEATH Follow

BEGONE. KEEP YOUR SUBPAR BAKED GOODS TO YOURSELF

🌽 sherlock_corn Follow

>:(

157 notes

🛸atomiclass9000 Follow

My driver’s license is a two year winning streak in Mario kart. Try arresting me now

⚔️ bluejitsu Follow

Oh???? So you lie to your followers???? I know I won first place last games night and you know it

🛸atomiclass9000 Follow

You cheated

🌽 sherlock_corn Follow

Says the guy who hacks games as a pastime. I still want a rematch

⚔️ bluejitsu Follow

You tell him corn

🌽 sherlock_corn Follow

Oh I know you’re not innocent either mr

203 notes

🚂imatrainwreck Follow

If only there was a way to grow instant luscious locks

🐙massages-at-a-price Follow

I can help with that

#hehe

72 notes

🛸atomiclass9000 Follow

Throwback to that one time my brother was mistaken as IT when trying to return someone’s keys

🥊 red_hotsoup Follow

I was just trying to help

#they fell down the drain #so I picked them up and pushed them back through the grate #I wasn’t trying to be scary #and should you really be posting this

341 notes

cyyyynamon said: I’m going cave diving tomorrow. Will I see you there?

💀outoftouchoutoftime Follow

But you didn’t invite me?

86 notes

⚔️ bluejitsu Follow

Don’t send me back to jail. I’m too pretty

🥊 red_hotsoup Follow

What have you done now

⚔️ bluejitsu Follow

I was too pretty ✨

🛸atomiclass9000 Follow

Be original, Blue

75 notes

💀outoftouchoutoftime Follow

First day of school. I’ve never seen this many people in one area before

🌽 sherlock_corn Follow

Oh the joys of public school. 

⚔️ bluejitsu Follow

*Wipes tear* they grow up so fast

💀outoftouchoutoftime Follow

So apparently normal people don’t chirp. I never want to hold a conversation ever again

60 notes

🕵️‍♀️sloopersleuth Follow

Yoooooo what if our mysterious superheroes in rainbow know the kappacrawler??? You think they’re buddies? Think they hang out and chill and talk about how their week has been? Think kappacrawler house sits from them sometimes? Think they share birthday cards?

7,421 notes

🎽tink-tank-toe Follow

Sometimes I wonder if time travellers really exist. Are we all just on some divergent timeline? How close a shave have we come to a world obsolete?

🛶canoodleoodle Follow

#posts that keep me up at night

5,329 notes

🎨asprinkleofrazzmatazz Follow

Remember to spread the positivity ✨☀️ Kindness can go a long way

🛸atomiclass9000 Follow

Where was this kindness when it came to the last pizza slice?

🎨asprinkleofrazzmatazz Follow

I was already at my daily kindness quota 

1,997 notes

🔎detective-cornstarch Follow

It has occurred to me not everyone on this website knows about the kappacrawler

🔎detective-cornstarch Follow

Your loss

466 notes

🦷sleeptooth Follow

#i am curious

8,003 notes

🫨shake-it-away Follow

Oh kappacrawler, take me away

🫨shake-it-away Follow

Oh kappacrawler, whisk me away into the night

🫨shake-it-away Follow

Oh kappacrawler kidnap me

809 notes

🍮fastest-flanalive Follow

Stop with these he/him pronouns for the kappacrawler. Did you ask them their preferred pronouns????? No. Kappacrawler could be a very fancy lady

🐈meown Follow

I’m very sorry kappacrawler. You can be a fancy lady if you want :(

🍯honeyhoneysugar Follow

Have we been misgendering kappacrawler with whole time? 

😐restingsnitchface Follow

It’s a cryptid. You think it’ll care about gender?

7,335 notes

🐸frippityfroppity Follow

If I was a kappacrawler where would I hide

🍾snopop Follow

In your walls

2,756 notes

🫣flinx-blinx Follow

I thought there was only one kappacrawler. But I swear I just saw two. Is there a mr and mrs kappa??? Baby kappletts??? A whole kappa family 🥹🥹

😈my-dad-is-satan Follow

Maybe? I think there’s at least three

4,102 notes

🐒nightmonkey Follow

Who is this kappa??? Why is he crawling???

🐒nightmonkey Follow

Spider-man wannabe

2,811 notes

🦜petite-parakeet Follow

Still convinced that whole invasion thing was a hoax. Elaborate, but a hoax

765 notes

🪄meet-my-nunchucks Follow

Were those aliens sent packing? I’m confused

🪄meet-my-nunchucks Follow

Are they at home? On some faraway planet? Kicking their tentacles up after a long day at work invading our planet?

3,230 notes

💗love-duv Follow

5,008 notes

📖myfixoffic Follow

Guys come read my slenderman x kappacrawler fic here for all of your slenderkappa needs

🌑faded-moonlight Follow

Why would you write this?

📖myfixoffic Follow

Why not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

278 notes

⚔️ bluejitsu Follow

I heard that kappacrawler has an 8-pack. That the kappacrawler is shredded

🛸atomiclass9000 Follow

Be original, Blue (tally: II)

312 notes

👻ghost-chase Follow

Why can’t I live in New York. I want to fight aliens too

👻ghost-chase Follow

1,864 notes

[thatswhatsushesaid]

while high last night i decided to bully the new facebook AI assistant by asking it to calculate how many words the beatles have ever written across their complete discography. the resulting interaction was so unexpectedly interesting to me that i just really want to share it here.

(full disclosure: while not high, i did try to do a little digging to verify whether meta's AI was trained in the same shitty way that the chatGPT AI was, i.e., through broad scraping of information without any regard for copyright or other intellectual property rights, and was modestly reassured that there are more licensing agreements in place between meta and IP sources. i do wonder just how heavily they're leaning on the 'fair use' provision of copyright law to justify some of what they're doing, but tl;dr it looks like they have learned from chatGPT's high profile mistakes and are trying not to replicate them.)

anyway, here's how it went:

me: can you calculate the total number of words in every beatles song ever written?

meta AI: I can't calculate the total number of words in every Beatles song ever written, but I can tell you that there are 186 songs in total by the Beatles ¹. You can use an online lyrics website, such as Genius, MetroLyrics or AZLyrics, to count the words in each song and calculate the total number of words in every Beatles song ever written. [link to Bing search results included]

me: but i'm tired 😞

meta AI: I understand! Counting the words in every Beatles song would be a massive task. It's estimated that the Beatles have written over 250,000 words in their songs. If you're feeling tired, you can always try breaking the task down into smaller chunks, like counting the words in one album at a time. Alternatively, you could try searching online for a pre-existing count or estimate. Some fans or researchers may have already done the work for you! Get some rest, and maybe tackle the task when you're feeling more energized!

me: what if i say please

meta AI: Please is a magic word!

Alright, I'll try to help you with that. However, please note that it's a complex task, and I might not be able to give you an exact count. But I can try to provide an estimate based on available data and sources.

According to various sources, including lyrics websites and Beatles fan communities, the estimated total word count for all Beatles songs is around 250,000 to 300,000 words.

Here's a rough breakdown:

- John Lennon wrote around 80,000 to 100,000 words

- Paul McCartney wrote around 80,000 to 100,000 words

- George Harrison wrote around 30,000 to 40,000 words

- Ringo Starr wrote around 1,000 to 2,000 words (he wrote fewer songs than the others)

Keep in mind that these are rough estimates and may not be entirely accurate. But I hope this gives you an idea of the total word count for all Beatles songs!

me: wow! thank you so much! [can't believe i thanked the AI here, but whatever, weed had the wheel ok]

meta AI: You're welcome! It was my pleasure to help. I hope you found the estimate helpful. The Beatles have an incredible legacy, and their music has brought joy to so many people around the world. If you have any more questions or need help with anything else, feel free to ask! And remember, "All you need is love..."

anyway, congratulations to me personally for politely bullying an AI to do more work than it initially claimed it was capable of doing. sometimes saying please will actually make the computer do the thing 👍

[horseimagebarn]

hi i noticed you haven't been posting in a bit, this is not a pressure post i just hope ur okay and u realise how much i (we) love your presence on tumblr (please do NOT feel any pressure to return!! this is not that kind of ask!!)

please take care of yourself horseimagebarn <3

hello dear friend i forgot this account and also tumblr the application slash website existed for a minute because i do that sometimes but i remember now maybe i should hope

my apologies for vanishing without warning i got crazy busy i got promoted at my job which is crazy and also must undergo that strange torture called college even during the summer but soon i shall be moving in with my girlfriend and our lovely cat and fish and also obtaining some strange time traveling creature that i am told is a dog so i will hopefully have more time in such a tranquil environment surrounded by those i love so that i might to dedicate more of that precious time to horses which i have not forgotten about in the slightest despite my negligence here at the horseimagebarn

i pray you and all of my horsers here have fared well in my absence and continue to do so and i love you

[laithraihan]

now i’m kinda curious to hear what you think of proshipping.. if you don’t mind of course

I'll share my thoughts, and if theres anything I say that doesnt make sense feel free to point it out to me because I mostly write with the help of a translator. Under the cut because I wrote too much stuff.

TLDR: proshippers hate me because I dont want to look at glorified depictions of pedophilia/incest/etc, antis hate me because my content isnt 100% sanitized. I stay around anti circles because I find it slightly easier for me to talk about my headcanons with them even though I think they can be insufferable.

So the thing about proshipping. From what I've seen it means being "anti-harassment" and being in support of curating your online experience, which sounds great on paper and that's practically what I do. I have over 3k accounts blocked on my personal twitter to navigate the website more easily and I also dont care if someone blocks me if they dont like my stuff.

Except proshippers never consider me a proshipper because I am uncomfortable with viewing glorified depictions of topics like pedophilia, incest, rape, all that stuff. The same way people are uncomfortable with excessive blood and gore (which I also can't really handle seeing). Whether or not it's always easy to tell if it's glorified is an entirely different topic, which is precisely why I stay away from all depictions in general to avoid being intrusive.

And what's interesting is that I do not label myself an "anti". Mainly because I don't even know what the term "anti" is supposed to mean ("anti-" what exactly. Genuinely please tell me because I actually dont know) But the ones who label themselves "proship" always call me an anti, because again I do not wish to engage with content related to pedophilia etc, and that alone apparently enough to be considered "a person who harasses others over fiction" even if I mind my own business and have no interest in forcing my personal tastes on others, especially if they make it clear that they wont change their mind. Which makes me believe that for a lot of self-identified proshippers, the definition of being "proship" would be more similar to "I love fucked up stuff and if you dont then youre lame and it obviously means you can't tell the difference between fiction and reality" which honestly seems like insecurity to me.

Forgive me for bringing up this up once again but I want to mention an example to make it easier for me to explain: yknow the whole thing with me drawing Minori and Reigen and labelling it "non-cp" which caused a wave of both self-identified antis and proshippers harassing me over that (I'll say that proshippers were more bold about it since the antis harassing me were all anonymous). Proshippers saw me saying "I dont ship that" and interpreted it as me being defensive and in denial, as if I said "guys I swear Im an anti !!! please dont think im a proshipper !!! ", when I meant "I dont want to discuss this with others in a shipping manner because thats not how I see it and I dont want to enter a space Im not comfortable with"

I admit I responded to this situation in a petty manner, but this was after several days of harassment done directly in my inbox and publicly (sometimes I wish yall remembered that group chats and priv accounts exist). My point is that simply saying you don't like seeing pedophilia in fiction is enough for proshippers to believe it's justified for them to harass you over it (and I'm fully aware they'll say it's not harassment, only when antis and "puriteens" do this to them then it's harassment)

Now about the anti side. Don't get me started on them either. If proshippers see me as an enemy then this must mean that I always get along with the ones who call themselves "antis" (I do not). Note that Im only talking about adults here, I dislike beefing with children and I think their feelings about this are entirely reasonable (I'll elaborate on this when talking about internet safety)

But anyways. I think a lot of adults are discourse-brained and do way too much. Im thinking of nonsense like "this ship is problematic because they are 'sibling-coded' so thats basically incest" "siblings giving each other a hug gives me proship vibes" things of that nature. And you're not allowed to do anything that even has the smallest possibility of being interpreted as "problematic", because then they'll harass you for it, and if you clarify your intentions, they expect you to apologize for "misleading" them because clearly they didnt do anything wrong by making assumptions about you.

There's almost no room allowed for creativity with them, everyone has to follow fanon because they consider it canon, if you ever want to try something other than the same boring domestic fluff then it's "too much" (and not even platonic affection is acceptable to draw in certain cases). Which is incredibly fucking boring to me who wants to see different types of content. People even said I was enjoying incest for drawing Reigen selfcest, and that I was "making others uncomfortable" by drawing it. Genuinely seems to me that they only care about moral superiority, that they never think about anything in depth, and I dont think they realize that it also shows in what they create: boring and repeated fanart and headcanons where the only thing you can say about it is "thats cute", nothing more because you saw it ten billion times already. You cant draw two people showing platonic affection that absolutely nobody would bat an eye if it happened in real life, you cant discuss something specific in more depth without people saying you have a fetish for it, and then they'll harass you based on their speculation that it's a fetish. I dont think many realize this, but fandoms are full of autistic people, so it's normal to see people who are interested in very specific things that dont make sense to others! I wish people were less judgmental, but at the same time I dont care if people think Im weird. I think what I mean is theres no reason to mistreat weird people who do no harm to others.

So yeah if you call yourself an "anti" I'll assume youre spend too much time engaging in fandom discourse and you're the type of person to believe that fanart where two people are holding hands is the equivalent to drawing them fucking each other. Which I think is a very childish mindset to have and it's worrying that many adults think this way. I also think that as an adult they should be capable of blocking stuff they hate instead of constantly arguing with people online because at this point it's just mental torture.

The thing about internet safety I mentioned earlier, I'd say this is the one thing that I'll always prioritize discussing whenever proship discourse comes up.... To put it simply: filter and limit the visibility of your content, do not put triggering stuff in the main tags, stay in your own circles. Whether or not you believe fictional rape/pedophilia/etc is bad is irrelevant, my point is that these are objectively triggering topics and should be filtered just like how there are warnings for violence and blood even if it's not real.

"But it's the parents' responsibility to control what kids look at online, this has nothing to do with me!" and I agree with the parents being the ones Primarily responsible. However the reality is that children are online and there's nothing you can do to stop it from happening. Kids will also enter spaces theyre not allowed in, theyre children and children are rebellious especially teenagers, I was like this as a teenager too. You'd be lying if you said you were always obedient since childhood and never did anything you were told Not to do. And you can't really expect teenagers to always block and not interact if they see something triggering. It's your responsibility to block them if they interact with you, because what I see most of the time is adults bickering with teenagers who are uncomfortable, calling them "puriteens", putting them on blast and allowing other adults including NSFW accounts to dunk on them.

Humiliating and degrading teenagers does not "teach them a lesson", it only makes the teenager more stubborn and reactive. Adults must accept that kids will always find their way in there even if your content isnt easily accessible. So I think it's stupid to feel offended at a child because they got upset when they found upsetting content like how any normal child would react. Which is why I wish more adults would keep blocking without saying anything petty to provoke teenagers.

Before someone pancake-waffles me and says "so youre fine with antis doxxing people" no I do not support doxxing. Ive been doxxed so I know it sucks. However the only times Ive seen it go this far is after continuous arguing because nobody knows when to stop. Im not saying this applies all the time nor am I saying doxxing is fine, but there are ways to minimize this sort of outcome as much as possible. Both sides have doxxed people over petty arguments that couldve easily been avoided if they just blocked each other and moved on.

The topic above (internet safety) is probably the only thing related to this where Im actively telling others what they should be doing. It's not only teenagers who are triggered by depictions of pedophilia etc but also adults like myself. In my case Im old enough to block content I dislike without saying a word, however I cant help but think that there's not enough being done about filtering especially when I do not search for this type of content and I still see it all the time.

I also think it's important for me to mention that I have a very poor sense of morality. I do not have a personal moral code that I adhere to, and I mostly stick to the basic universal ones that make sense to me. So I will not discuss the "morals" of consuming this stuff because I am not adequate to share an opinion on this, and I know the most popular topic of discussion related to proship discourse is morality which I frankly find counterproductive. I dont understand why people should care so much if I find something morally correct or not, unless it's to make themselves feel better about having a "superior opinion" to mine. Though I will say that if a man tells me he's into rape "but only in fiction!" then I dont think it will stop me of imagining myself bashing his skull repeatedly with large rocks. Maybe Im too mistrustful of men in general.

Final point I want to clarify is that I am not trying to assert some sort of superiority over people by disliking both sides, like saying "Im not an anti or a proshipper Im a Normal person" or something like that, and Im not expressing a "neutral" stance on the topic of fiction's influence on reality either. There are topics like racism and orientalism in fiction that Im vocal about (which is expected since Im Algerian). I genuinely believe there are many things that are interesting to discuss and should be prioritized, but too many people are chronically online, subjective and defensive, at this point I dont even think it's accurate to say that disliking one side automatically means you support the other side regarding fiction. To me, "proship discourse" is not about the debate of the effects of fiction on reality, censorship in media, etc. It's about everything I described earlier that happens online.

[foone]

So here's the thing about AI art, and why it seems to be connected to a bunch of unethical scumbags despite being an ethically neutral technology on its own. After the readmore, cause long. Tl;dr: capitalism

The problem is competition. More generally, the problem is capitalism.

So the kind of AI art we're seeing these days is based on something called "deep learning", a type of machine learning based on neural networks. How they work exactly isn't important, but one aspect in general is: they have to be trained.

The way it works is that if you want your AI to be able to generate X, you have to be able to train it on a lot of X. The more, the better. It gets better and better at generating something the more it has seen it. Too small a training dataset and it will do a bad job of generating it.

So you need to feed your hungry AI as much as you can. Now, say you've got two AI projects starting up:

Project A wants to do this ethically. They generate their own content to train the AI on, and they seek out datasets that allow them to be used in AI training systems. They avoid misusing any public data that doesn't explicitly give consent for the data to be used for AI training.

Meanwhile, Project B has no interest in the ethics of what they're doing, so long as it makes them money. So they don't shy away from scraping entire websites of user-submitted content and stuffing it into their AI. DeviantArt, Flickr, Tumblr? It's all the same to them. Shove it in!

Now let's fast forward a couple months of these two projects doing this. They both go to demo their project to potential investors and the public art large.

Which one do you think has a better-trained AI? the one with the smaller, ethically-obtained dataset? Or the one with the much larger dataset that they "found" somewhere after it fell off a truck?

It's gonna be the second one, every time. So they get the money, they get the attention, they get to keep growing as more and more data gets stuffed into it.

And this has a follow-on effect: we've just pre-selected AI projects for being run by amoral bastards, remember. So when someone is like "hey can we use this AI to make NFTs?" or "Hey can your AI help us detect illegal immigrants by scanning Facebook selfies?", of course they're gonna say "yeah, if you pay us enough".

So while the technology is not, in itself, immoral or unethical, the situations around how it gets used in capitalism definitely are. That external influence heavily affects how it gets used, and who "wins" in this field. And it won't be the good guys.

An important follow-up: this is focusing on the production side of AI, but obviously even if you had an AI art generator trained on entirely ethically sourced data, it could still be used unethically: it could put artists out of work, by replacing their labor with cheaper machine labor. Again, this is not a problem of the technology itself: it's a problem of capitalism. If artists weren't competing to survive, the existence of cheap AI art would not be a threat.

I just feel it's important to point this out, because I sometimes see people defending the existence of AI Art from a sort of abstract perspective. Yes, if you separate it completely from the society we live in, it's a neutral or even good technology. Unfortunately, we still live in a world ruled by capitalism, and it only makes sense to analyze AI Art from a perspective of having to continue to live in capitalism alongside it.

If you want ideologically pure AI Art, feel free to rise up, lose your chains, overthrow the bourgeoisie, and all that. But it's naive to defend it as just a neutral technology like any other when it's being wielded in capitalism; ie overwhelmingly negatively in impact.